I'm a mission trip participant?
I "volunteered" recently to drive my truck and carry luggage for a group from my church to go on a mission trip. They're going on a work trip to Monroe, Louisiana to help out in a community with an organization called Group Workcamps. Somehow, I missed the part where they said I'd be an actual mission trip participant. Me? How the heck'd that work out that way?!? I'm the driver. I filled in the circles that said I'd prefer to work with children and animals, I guess in a VBS setting.

I've never really shared Jesus with animals, but it can't be too much different than children. Both are fidgety, easily agitated creatures. I'd like to maybe perform a puppet show for recently neutered cats. I don't know how many neutered cats are in need of Jesus in the greater Monroe, Louisiana region, but I'll be there with my hand puppet just in case. I just look at it like this: what cat who just had his balls torn off doesn't need Jesus.

Nelson, fear, and a really great quote
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

I watched the movie, Coach Carter yesterday and one of the characters recited this quote. It reminded me how much I've always enjoyed this quote so I finally went and looked it up. Everyone credits this quote to Nelson Mandela, because he said it in his inauguration speech, but I guess Nelson loves a good self-help book as much as the rest of us. I think I'll pick this book up and see if the rest of it is as inspiring. This quote uncovers a curious weakness in my character. I think this weakness is, has become, has always been my character more than what I believe my character to be. I think it stems from my fear, and my greatest fear is that I would succeed. It freezes me and then I've lost one more day in a extended ambivalent daydream and continue in a cycle that perpetuates a feeling of being socially and professionally impotent, ineffectual, moot. Hey Jane, how do I get off this crazy...thing.

I didn't know my blog was therapy. Do I owe myself money now? Maybe instead, I'll barter for services. You should also never watch the movie, I Heart Huckabees, while in a social, personal, spiritual quandry, as I just did. It soooo doesn't help the situation. But the quote, the quote is a humdinger. Can't wait to see how I feel about this tomorrow morning. : )

Football Beautiful
"There's no such thing as a fat girl, she's just "Football Beautiful". -Laura Doyle

I am compelled, as of late, by women athletes. It started during the Women's College World Series. I had never watched women's softball, but I witnessed heroic acts of athleticism every day on that field in Oklahoma City. They were warriors and they fought with unrelenting fervor and hope. In the midst of an incredible spectacle, the NCAA shared their latest sentiment towards women athletes in a series of commercials which said, without saying, "You're a woman athlete, study hard because once this moment's over, your only hope is a steady paycheck or motherhood." I think what was so hurtful was the greater social truth which screamed "foul". I queried: are the parking lots of children's soccer fields across America the elephant graveyards of women athletes?

It was in this spirit of questioning that I got my answer sitting in my car at a Sonic last week. You notice a woman who is almost six feet tall wearing football pants, especially if she's accompanied by a woman who is, dare I say, formidable, even on crutches. They were like an athletic mirage to me and as I scrambled for my notepad, I was blathering to myself how it was insane to approach total strangers to ask for an interview, but I was moving toward them with almost wild-eyed abandon. I seem to remember saying words like, "Hi...blog...interview...?" I was stricken once again by my Babbling Disorder, but they were kind and allowed me to join them.

I found myself sitting with two members of the Nashville Dream, a woman's full-contact football team, which plays within the National Women's Football Association (NWFA). This dynamic duo as I soon discovered, are the Rookie and the Veteran, and as different as night and day, but share an equal love for their unlikely sport of choice. Laura Doyle is the rookie: sunny, eager, and tall. She is a shock of long limbs topped with a quick smile and heart-felt laugh. It's almost disconcerting to me to imagine her bearing down on someone to ruin their day, but she's a duel role player as wide receiver and cornerback. She noted quickly, "We hit hard and we're proud of that. A lot of teams in our league will say they hit hard, but we take out three or four girls a game." Doyle's eyes changed when she said this and I recognized immediately what it was: killer instinct. Some athletes possess this valuable commodity and it's a necessary ingredient in the makings of a successful football player. I never doubt for a second that Laura is successful at the positions she plays.

The yang to Doyle's yin sits next to her. I recognized her from the second I saw her across the parking lot. Not in who she was, but in what she was: an accomplished warrior. In street clothes and fighting with her crutches to begrudgingly allow a broken ankle to heal, she is what most people think they are when they delusively believe they're athletic. It's like sitting across from a gunfighter or a samurai. There's an aura about Mona Overstreet that you don't get with your run-of-the-mill jock. She's the Real Deal and if she would have looked at me and said that I'd be dead before I took the next bite of my breakfast toaster sandwich, I would have believed her. Overstreet isn't rude, threatening, or brash, quite the contrary, there is a quietness about her which is probably very comforting to friends and, as I can attest, completely unnerving to outsiders. I also never doubt for a second that Mona Overstreet is very successful at outside linebacker.

Where Doyle shares family stories and we laugh with her at the retelling of her rookie experiences, Overstreet further becomes an enigma in her silence. She does share that she has been with the team since it's inception five years ago. She was a powerlifter and was recruited to play for the Dream. "She's being way too modest," Doyle says, "this girl is famous." Indeed she is; apparently Mona Overstreet is a five-time national champion and a three-time world champion powerlifter, but her most forward request is when she politely asks that I don't cast her organization in an unfair light. I can tell by the tone of her request that others have, in their ignorance, presented this sport as a sideshow or an anomaly. I believe an anomaly is more like the two-year life span of the USFL or the hype of Vince McMahon's XFL which crashed and burned like the Hindenburg under the strongarm tactics of the NFL.

The NWFA, on the other hand, is a league consisting of 42 teams in 26 states and has been in existence for five years. Someone is watching these games, because the league started with only the Nashville Dream and the Alabama Renegade playing one another in a six-game showcase. Apparently, a lot of women want to play football and a whole lot of people want to see it. I didn't know this team, these players, or this league existed before I introduced myself to Doyle and Overstreet, but I'm glad it does exist and I'm thankful for these women. They speak of their sport with passion and in a world where Terrell Owen's contract negotiation fill the sports news, these women practice three nights a week, play an eight game schedule, not including playoffs, and are paid a whopping one dollar a season. I respect the hell outta that kind of an attitude. It gives me the same feeling as when I discovered as a child that there was a time when football players didn't wear face masks or needed signing bonuses to show up at training camp. I was thinking of becoming a Nashville Sounds fan (our local AAA baseball team) until I met Laura and Mona, but I think I'm going to start watching football in the spring.

Fathers Day 2K5
This was my Fathers Day Card from Christian. What made it interesting was Christian's sentiment that he wrote in the card:
"Happy Fathers Day, Dad! I hope you have a good one! And thank you for everything you've done (good things) for this family."
Hm, "good things", not those crappy, stupid drunken things you're capable of, far too often. I love a good back-handed compliment. I still don't know if he fully understands his own ironic moments or he just gets lucky at hitting the nail on the head. But it still made me laugh out loud.

"I wish I was a monkey."
What do you say to a little boy who's fondest wish is to become a simian. I believe you should celebrate those moments and then lovingly mock him for the next decade. My Slappy turned thirteen today and I had to pause and reflect on what he has been and what it has meant to me. These pictures are thirteen years of me marvelling at the creation of a life. He's playing Stevie Ray Vaughan in the next room on his guitar and he almost has the phrasing down perfectly. I still remember him puking on every shirt I owned, and ultimately, puking in his grandmother's mouth after we told her not to bounce him after he'd just eaten. Sometimes, an "I told you so" is glaringly weak compared to the perfection of the moment.

I remember clearly his first profanity. Children are parrots when they're toddlers, and almost every parent has that story of their child repeating the least appropriate utterance that they've heard, but this was a gem for the ages. It was a time of me being forced to construct my own furniture from the evil empire known as IKEA and those were Saturdays filled with bleeding digits and mild profanities.

Christian was three and strapped into his car seat like he was about to take off on a moon launch. Apparently, the Burger King toy was of inferior design and as he sat there holding his broken happiness, we heard "son of a bitch" in a tiny voice from the back seat. Waves of fearfulness, awe, and speaking only for my own dementia, pride, nauseatingly swept over me again and again. A three-year-old using profanity is disconcerting and knowing that you contributed to your own child uttering such a phrase is achingly painful, but I had just witnessed my son as a toddler demonstrate applied learning by communicating his obvious disdain for errant toy manufacturing in the correct contextual use. I knew at that moment, he'd be a bright little crayon in the box of life and he hasn't disappointed me yet.

This moment is yours, Christian, I hope that your life has been as much fun as it has been to witness it. I love you and adore you. Happy birthday.
-Your dad

My Fix
I've recently been fascinated that baseball players spit so much and that fastpitch softball players seriously need better batting coaches. I just watched a female softball player spit, grab her crotch and "adjust", and then spit two more times. Oh wait, she just "adjusted" herself again. I'm puzzled now, because she's not wearing a cup and if I remember my 10th grade biology, there's no "adjusting" involved for her. She is wearing batting gloves, so maybe it's a nervous tic because she can't bite her fingernails. The spitting thing is still a curiosity to me. Both, baseball and softball players can produce these tiny spitballs like they're biting the ends off of Q-tips. It's not sunflower seeds, because those fly all over the place when they spit them out.

No, these are tiny little saliva snowballs that are produced at near Tourette-like frequency. I went outside the other day to experiment with this type of spitting and I wound up looking like a rabid squirrel. I must lack a spitting gene, because I've never been able to spit. I produce drool without the ability to propel it from my mouth with any formidable velocity. I think I've deprived myself so much of my life because I was a "drooler" in my formative years. I worked so hard at denying the release of saliva to prevent social rejection, that I never nurtured the importance of spitting well. I guess I'll just have to take solace in my the ability to enunciate, communicate through written correspondence, and leave spitting to the professionals.

My baseball fix is getting fulfilled this week by the softball college world series, but there are some peculiarities that are tripping me up from fully enjoying this sport. As the WNBA is to dunking, fastpitch softball is to homeruns. Okay, forget homeruns, just the ability to drive the ball. Okay, forget driving the ball, just hitting the ball. Pitching has dominated every game I've watched so far and I've seen maybe one or two hitters on every team that appears capable of holding onto the two and a half-pound bat. The commentators try to explain this with relativistic physics by saying because the ball only has to travel 43 feet and averages around 50 mph, then that's the same as trying to hit a 90 mph fastball. I think that's getting a little loose with the physics to help them get to sleep at night and live with a hole in their swing that you could drive a dump truck through. A "hole in your swing" refers to any pitch that you can't consistently hit, meaning you can't hit a curveball or a slider.

The "hole" is, amazingly, over the middle of the plate for fastpitch softball players. The most popular pitch in fastpitch is the Riser and out of 100 pitches, it's probably thrown 70 times. It's basically a fastball that gains elevation as it approaches the strike zone. That's called a bad pitch in baseball. Hitters in baseball live for the chance to see a high fastball. In fastpitch, it's the bane of every hitter.

College fastpitch does have it's saving graces and there are things I like about the game. Their enthusiasm for their team is quirkily infectious, their defensive play is excellent, and they have a inviting game commentary. They allow the novice viewer into the game by sharing the nuances of the sport, factoids about the players, and some of their school traditions. I'm a total sucker for useless information, so they hooked me with the player interviews. It's pretty good entertainment overall and I've always been a fan of female sports. Now someone teach these girls how to hit a high fastball and we got a game!

Okay, sorry, it's over. Michigan beat UCLA in extra innings tonight, which ends the season. Guess I should have posted this a little sooner. : /